First National Congress of the Spanish Women's Long Rifle Party

The First National Congress of the Spanish Falange’s Women’s Section took place in Salamanca on 6 January 1937, as war transformed a small women’s auxiliary into a politically consequential organization. Its public reorganization placed Marichu de la Mora in the senior propaganda post, but Clara Stauffer’s apparent retreat concealed her continuing command of the organization’s message and foreshadowed her wider role as a bridge between Francoist Spain and Nazi Germany.

Origins and wartime elevation

Founded in June 1934, the Women’s Section initially had modest, largely charitable purposes. Before the war, its members visited imprisoned Falangists and accompanied their families, following the principle articulated by its founder, Pilar Primo de Rivera: women were to serve. The conflict gave the organization a new prominence, and the congress brought delegates from every province in the Francoist zone, with the Madrid leadership the sole exception.

The gathering was therefore more than a ceremonial beginning. The Women’s Section had become important enough to hold a national congress, while its leadership remained concentrated in a small circle. Pilar, its National Chief, stood at the top; Marichu de la Mora served as National Secretary; and Stauffer, then Press and Propaganda Delegate, occupied the third position in the organization’s hierarchy.

A retreat that preserved influence

At the congress, Stauffer moved herself down to Central Assistant for Press and Propaganda, leaving de la Mora to take the National Delegate’s position. The change made de la Mora appear to be the gathering’s great victor, but it did not transfer control of the propaganda operation. Stauffer wrote all the unsigned texts and edited the signed contributions to the Women’s Section’s official book, first published in 1938 without an imprint because Madrid remained outside Francoist control. The book was reissued repeatedly in the early 1940s.

Stauffer also began contributing to the Salamanca newspaper El Adelanto in January 1937 as a spokesperson for Falangist women. Her formal demotion thus contrasted with the reach of her actual work: she shaped both the organization’s official publication and its public voice. The congress’s arrangement functioned as propaganda in itself, while leaving Stauffer in a position to exercise influence without holding the most visible title.

Stauffer between Spain and Germany

Stauffer’s position rested in part on a biography that crossed national boundaries. Born in Madrid in 1904 to a German father and a Madrid-born mother who retained her parents’ nationality, she was educated in Germany and still held only German nationality at the time of the congress. Her foreignness did not prevent her from becoming prominent in the limited world of women’s sport in Spain, where she excelled at swimming and skiing, or from advancing within the Falange.

Instead, that nationality made her useful to the Francoist government’s relationship with the Third Reich. Stauffer travelled frequently to Germany, where she was known as Klara, guiding and interpreting for Falange and Francoist government representatives during the war and afterward. She accompanied Mercedes Sanz Bachiller and Carmen de Icaza on visits, usually to Hamburg, to study Nazi social-assistance programs, especially Winterhilfe, which served as a model for their own organization. Her work also extended to discreet or secret missions connected to Francoist military representatives’ negotiations for German military aid and the exchange of wolfram and other raw materials.

From congress to transnational network

By the time the congress convened, Stauffer was already positioned to connect political and organizational worlds beyond Spain. Members of the substantial Nazi community around the Francoist government regarded her as one of their own. After returning to Madrid in the spring of 1939, she continued her dual political identification—Francoist in Spain, Nazi in Germany—and helped connect the Berlin embassy with the new government.

Her home at 14 Calle Galileo became a meeting place for Hitler’s supporters and Franco’s followers. Seen in this longer arc, the congress’s personnel reshuffle was not a departure from power but an early expression of Stauffer’s characteristic approach: visible office could be surrendered while influence, information, and access continued to accumulate. The event marks the point at which her propaganda role and her cross-border usefulness became legible as parts of the same political career.